Monday, March 28, 2016

Just a textual update. Friday was the first of Michael's 3 days off, and the last day I was going to be able to get my SOFA stamp on my passport. We left the house at 9, arrived at Osan City Hall at about 9:40, and got some incorrect directions via phone telling us to take Highway 1 South for another 20 minutes where we would find the air base.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

I thought I was going to go into Yongsan with Michael today to keep him company in case his dentist decided to perform his root canal that he needs. One of the other soldiers had a dentist appointment as well so they made arrangements to take a government vehicle. Basically Michael didn't need me anymore. LOL

Tuesday I did lots of adulty things that probably should have been done earlier. Michael and I got me fully registered with my insurance over here. Finally. We also set up an appointment for me to take my written driver's test to get my SOFA driver's license. Yes, it's taken me almost three months to get that thing. It's also taking me much too long to get my SOFA stamp on my passport. In my defense, we tried at the beginning of March but Michael's ID card is going to expire soon and that stamp would have then been set to expire soon. So tomorrow we will be spending the entire day at the immigration office with the end goal of having my passport taken care of. If not... well, my visa technically expires on Saturday so that's not good LOL. I can't believe I've been in Korea for three months already! How time flies!

Scent Description: A house blend of strawberry, cake, and pomegranate.

Date Received: February 2016

Weight Melted: 1.0 oz

Location of Warmer: Kitchen, in tealight warmer

Cold Sniff: 4/5 An even blend of cake, sweet strawberries, and pomegranate.

Warm Sniff: 4/5 I'd forgotten that this had a cake note to it, so I got a pleasant surprise when I realized that this was a bakery blend. The cake is more batter-like than other cake scents, while the pomegranates and strawberries blend together into a sweet medley.

Melting Power: 3/5 I got about 5 hours from this tart before the scent died off.

Repurchase: Yes! Really anything Twisted Peppermint that performs better than BBW's version I like to stock up on. I do wish this was a little stronger, but it's my experience that the blend itself is just light. It could also be that I didn't give this much time to cure before melting it. I'm still not sure I entirely buy the whole curing thing, but I have found certain vendors have waxes that seem to perform better the longer I let it sit. Conversely, I've found vendors that seem to have their scents fade as time goes on. There are lots of factors that go into this, however, so I'm not entirely crediting it to curing.

Owl Creek starts off as a very heavy toffee & caramel scentthat sweetens and strengthens as it sits on the skin. My nose picks up a suggestion of apples every time it catches a whiff, and I'm taken to a fall festival that hints of pumpkins. Sometimes there's a hint of spice that I can't quite place. At the end of its life this boasts of sweet ice cream and heavy coconut. A rather dynamic fragrance!

This lovely concoction opens up with heavy vanilla and soft, creamy peppermint notes. Hiding in the background is the cold bite of winter and a sweet and musky amber note. As it settles in the slightly floral musk makes its way to the front, combining with the rest of the notes to create a very authentic white chocolate scent sprinkled with hints of peppermint. A simple but gorgeous blend. Sometimes I forget that you don't always need a long list of scent notes in a fragrance to find something beautiful.

Solstice Scents recently announced they are discontinuing their rewards program in May of this year. Does that affect any orders you might want to make? I know it is making me reconsider when I want to place my next order. Hurry and reach that gift card threshold in the next 2 months, or forget about Solstice Scents until I run out of a scent that I really want more of?

Saturday, March 19, 2016

I won't bother writing about the rest of my week besides saying nothing happened; it was boring and not blog-worthy!

Today, however, was a whole other story! Michael's exercise ended and he finally got a weekend off! Knowing us, biking was a must. This time Michael and some of his coworkers made an event so others could join in if they wanted to. Only two other guys showed up, but it was as fun as it can be biking with three other much more fit people.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

I think it's well known to everyone that knows me that I have a hard time doing anything half way. I've jumped into working out at ~5 times a week, when I work out there's no such thing as going easy, when I work on a project I can't possibly put anything but my best forward... and when I try a new to me vendor, I go all in and try all the things. I've gotten much, much better in recent months, but there are still times when I accidentally go in a little too far and end up with a large flat rate box of new to me wax.

Vintage Chic Scents is one of those vendors that I went ham and picked up everything I could get my grubby little hands on. Okay, I had a list set up, but I didn't expect to get almost everything from my list!

I placed my order on February 19th and it shipped on February 23rd. On to what I got!

Warm Sniff: 5/5 No surprises. A very delectable blend. How many synonyms for delicious can I use in one post? :)

Scent Strength: 2/3

Scent Throw: >3/3 This filled the entire living room, hallway, bedroom, and some of the office and kitchen/dining room.

Melting Power: 4/5 I got about 7 hours from this melt.

Purchase: I already did! I received this as a gift, melted it, fell in love with it, and may or may not have bought an entire loaf at the recent Sniff My Tarts loaf sale. So that's that. If you're a fan of either of these scents, SMT's version is ah-may-zing!

Sunday, March 13, 2016

I'm already annoyed as I type this up. Blogger decided to post a lot of my properly scheduled posts (I checked, their scheduled post dates were not all on the same day at the same time!) all at once so I had a huge mess to clean up before working on this post. Hurray. If you see a couple posts in the next few days that look familiar, I'm sorry. Just wipe your memory and act like you haven't read it before, okay?!

Whaat? No, this picture wasn't taken back in December and thus has a winter themed backdrop for the tart. You are crazy! :)Scent Description: None available.
I get a very sweet and creamy lavender with a hint of peppermint.

Weight Melted: 1.1 oz

Location of Warmer: Office, in tealight warmer.

Cold Sniff: 4/5 A really lovely, creamy lavender peppermint blend.

Warm Sniff: 4/5 No surprised here. The peppermint was really light so if you're not a very big fan of strong peppermints this won't be too overpowering.

Cold Sniff: 4/5 Sweet? Check. Berries? Check. This is a recipe for success!

Warm Sniff: 4/5 This was such a sweet yet light scent. I'm sad that I couldn't find any scent descriptions from Carol's website and frankly I'm not scouring the multitude of files she has in the Facebook group to see if I can find it.

Melting Power: 5/5 I got about 10 hours, or 2.5 tealight candles, from this scent. What did I do with the other half of my tealight candle? Let it burn, because I was busy and didn't feel like messing with my warmers. LOL

Repurchase: Yes, if I ever see it again. The closest thing I'm seeing is Pink Sugared Cranberries, but from my own post history I can see that the cranberry note wasn't very strong and that's definitely not what I got here.

Warm Sniff: 0/5 I don't think I've ever hated a scent this much before. I literally got nauseous from the scent. Then when I left the area all of my possessions smelled like bile and tortilla chips, and I had to wipe down and scrub every surface I could in the living room. I don't like zucchini bread, and I didn't have high hopes for melting this, but that was a whole new level of yuck. I do recall that the glazed cinnamon donuts part of this melt really died off.

Scent Strength: 2.5/3

Scent Throw: 3/3 This filled the entire living room.

Melting Power: 3/5 This was going for about 5 hours before I turned it off. Why so long? I was asleep for the first 3 hours and in another room for the other 2. I regret every hour of it melting.

Repurchase: No. I feel really bad saying such awful things about this blend, but I promise I did not intend to 100% talk crap about this melt. I liked the cinnamon toast note on cold sniff and I've had a few successful zucchini blends before, so I hoped for that here.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Have you decided whether you're going to participate in Sniff My Tarts' Easter loaves sale? If so, have you figured out what blends you want your loaves in? Want some more blend options to make your choice just that much harder? Yes? Spectacular.

I was lucky enough to get my order in pretty quickly after Amy opened - it took about 5 minutes from start to finish, including some trouble on my end that I can't even remember. It was something to do with the checkout process. I was in the first group of orders. This order was placed on January 15th and shipped on February 29th. A decent amount of time, but I knew how long this could possibly take going into this order.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Uhh... my Saturday and Sunday were not productive in the least. I spent both days playing video games and watching movies and occasionally eating or sleeping. It was wonderful! I did want to clean, though, so I'm disappointed that I didn't really do that.

I did try to wash dishes like the responsible adult I am, but the inner tubing on my sink head burst! It was a mess. So I cancelled those plans and we got in touch with our realtors.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Scent Description: Fresh orange top notes sweeten this lush white floral bouquet. Forest fern adds a natural sensation to the heart of shimmering flowers, as light green tones balance the bouquet. Warm woods and a hint of musk warm the floral accord.
This smells just like the BBW Cherry Blossom perfume, if you're familiar with that.

Weight Melted: 1.1 oz.

Location of Warmer: Living Room, in tealight warmer

Cold Sniff: 4/5 I love Cherry Blossom, so naturally I liked this!

Warm Sniff: 5/5 This took on some extra notes that I can't quite describe, making it different enough from BBW's version that I wouldn't call this a dupe. Maybe added vanilla? In any case, I liked it!

Scent Strength: 1/3

Scent Throw: 3/3 This filled the entire living room.

Melting Power: >3/5 I got 5 hours from this tart, and I'm sure I could have gotten more if I'd lit another candle for it.

Repurchase: Yes! This was a sample from my March 2015 order, and I regret not melting this earlier and picking up more.

Monday, March 7, 2016

For those of you who may or may not be following my Stop & Chat series, you may recall me mentioning making a few fragrance-laden orders. This is the one that started all of the others.

I decided to finally buy because the lovely Julie gifted me a sample of Rose Mallow Cream and I fell in love with the scent. One bottle of perfume, one 10ml spray, and 17 1ml samples later, here we are. So let's take a look!

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Cold Sniff: 2.5/5 Eh, I'm not sure I'm a fan of banana scents in wax, and this didn't smell like authentic banana bread. More artificial banana scent that everyone knows.

Warm Sniff: 3/5 This only got better because the bread/muffin note became more dominant as this melted. Michael loved this scent, but I was not a fan.

Scent Strength: 1/3

Scent Throw: 3/3 This filled the guest room, guest bathroom, and entrance area of the house.

Melting Power: 3/5 I got about 5 hours from this before calling it quits.

Repurchase: No. I probably would pick one up just for Michael if he so desired, but I wouldn't pick this scent up for myself.

I'm experiencing some frustrations right now. I had one entire page's worth of scent notes, weight melted, performance, etc. and I cannot for the life of me find it. I have a new page that I started, but it only has a few entries and I have yet to post anything from my previous page's worth of melts. It's not that big a deal in the big scheme of things if I don't find it, but I'm upset that I put so much effort into my melts and future posts and now I can't post about it. AUUUGH!

Friday, March 4, 2016

Tuesday was a workout day with T and L! I met up with them at the realtor's office at 9 am, where we would walk to a small outdoor park with children's playground, badminton court, and various exercise equipment. Who knew, public health is a priority here! :)

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Welcome to the third edition of the Band of Bloggers. March is upon us and visions of spring lull us out of the winter doldrums. This month's topic sprung forth from a conversation with Deb and reading Michelle's blog post recently about Tea & Cakes being a scent trend.

What scent trends have you noticed or have you fallen into so far this year? What do you predict being some trending scents? Scent trends can be in wax, candles, perfume, and/or body care.

I've seen shaving cream as a popular blend lately. It's an awesome blend, but the name itself is kind of offsetting to those of us who are unfamiliar with what's in it. I'm coming back into flowery type blends. I still don't care for an overload of flowers, but I no longer mind it being in the midst of my blends. I've come across some lovely scents that way (Rose Mallow Cream from Solstice Scents, anyone?). As for trending scents? I think Lavender blends might be making a come back. I feel like it becomes popular every Spring though, because it's a pretty versatile scent with variations that play well in almost any circumstance. Sea salt is another one that I think is rising in popularity. A lot of scents, really. Then again, I feel like the past few months have been my great big comeback into the world of scented wax and bath and body products. All of this stuff could be old news. :)

We would love to hear from you!

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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

I have regrets today. I regret not buying some of Lara's chunk melts. Between the one I received and the numerous pictures she's posted to the OPT Facebook group I've found myself wanting some extra colorful, sparkly, glitter-bombed wax. I suppose what I got is good, though. I made this small order with the intention of trying out OPT and purposefully picked simpler, cheaper options and scents for this first-time purchase.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Haul time! This time we have a new to me vendor by the name of Sassy Girl Aroma. I submitted my order on February 12th and it was shipped on February 15th. It arrived to me in perfect condition, which is saying something given the state of 90% of my other packages. I think this was partly due to packaging. Everything was very nicely wrapped in bubble wrap and tissue paper, and there were packing peanuts in every spare bit of space in the box.
Anyways, on to what I got!